


you were spring

by salvage



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon route spoilers, M/M, Male My Unit | Byleth, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), extremely detailed descriptions of scars, immediately post-feral dimitri, seriously so much scar and wound talk, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:41:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27659006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salvage/pseuds/salvage
Summary: Dimitri turned his hand palm-up between them. His fingers, mottled and uneven with calluses and scar tissue, curled gently in toward his palm. The flesh of his palm was also worn into strange unnatural peaks and valleys with calluses, the hard skin forming a curved divot where the hilt of Areadbhar would fit comfortably. His sleeve pulled back from his wrist slightly so that Byleth could see where the broad expanse of his palm narrowed to vulnerable throat of his wrist, the skin there thin and pale in comparison with the thick calluses that marred his palm. Long slim tendons and the little dendritic tracks of veins were visible underneath the skin. “Would you like to feel?” Dimitri asked.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 5
Kudos: 124





	you were spring

**Author's Note:**

> At the Touch of You
>
>> At the touch of you,  
> As if you were an archer with your swift hand at the bow,  
> The arrows of delight shot through my body.
>> 
>> You were spring,  
> And I the edge of a cliff,  
> And a shining waterfall rushed over me.  
> 
> 
> Witter Brynner, 1916 

Dimitri was at the training grounds. Dimitri had been at the training grounds when Byleth arrived for his weekly sword session with Ashe and he remained there even after Byleth and Ashe finished, his dull training lance still slashing through the air of the arena, intermittently clattering against first Sylvain’s own lance and then, when Sylvain tired, Caspar’s training gauntlets. Both Sylvain and Caspar in their turns were shirtless, for during these waning days of the Blue Sea Moon the sun beat persistently upon the southerly reaches of Fódlan, but Dimitri wore a lightweight long-sleeved shirt despite the sweat that soaked through it, plastering it to his broad shoulders and thick upper arms. 

Perhaps he was pushing himself too hard; even still, it was a relief to see Dimitri at the training grounds—a relief to see him anywhere other than the ruined, drafty cathedral, either crouching motionless before the heap of rubble that had obliterated the apse when the roof caved in during the siege five years earlier or swiftly pacing the length of the transept, sometimes muttering audibly, his heavy cloak fluttering behind him. (It had also been a relief when Dimitri finally allowed Mercedes to take the cloak to the monastery’s laundry room and give it a thorough cleaning. Even on good days it had smelled of sweat, sharply, and of dog, base and mammalian, and of the hot blood and sick sweet decay of the battlefield.) 

Byleth remained at the training ground after Ashe left, taking refuge in the shade that the late-afternoon sun cast over half of the arena. He watched Dimitri and Caspar, taking mental notes about their fighting styles despite the growing discomfort of his short-sleeved linen training shirt, soaked through with sweat, clinging to his quickly cooling skin. It was a good match for both of them: Caspar was quicker than Dimitri, darting under the wide arc of Dimitri’s lance to sneak barely pulled hits to Dimitri’s sides and chest, but Dimitri was stronger and taller, and when his lance did catch Caspar it was with great resounding thuds that echoed across the otherwise empty training arena and nearly knocked Caspar off his feet. Perhaps they would have been more evenly matched had Dimitri been as fresh to training as Caspar was; as it was, Caspar bested him rather handily, pulling his punches but still hitting Dimitri hard enough that Byleth could hear the meaty collision of his lightweight training gauntlets with Dimitri’s ribs and the breath that huffed out of Dimitri’s lungs with each impact. 

“A worthy opponent,” Dimitri said once they had finished, wheezing a little bit, leaning heavily on his lance. 

Caspar dropped one gauntlet to the ground to shake Dimitri’s hand with about the same level of violence with which they had been fighting. As Dimitri returned his lance to the store of training weapons Caspar rolled his shoulders and tipped his head from side to side, still antsy, ready for a second round. His chest heaved against his tightly wrapped binder.

“You wanna go, Professor?” Caspar asked, looking hopeful.

Byleth shook his head. “Sauna for me,” he said, then he threw a significant glance at Dimitri. “Coming?” 

Dimitri’s shirt clung to his body; his hair was dark with sweat and stuck in wet clumps to his forehead and the nape of his neck. “No,” he said. 

“Get Balthus,” Byleth suggested to Caspar, whose face lit up at the idea. 

Dimitri still was not taking care of himself the way he ought to have: that he could now be found in the dining hall during mealtimes did not mean he was eating properly, and that he retreated to his room at night did not mean he was sleeping. He pushed himself to his limits during training sessions and in battle; he still sometimes sat for hours at a time in the ruined cathedral, staring sightlessly at the heap of rubble that stood where the apse and chancel used to be. His return to the land of the living seemed fragile and conditional. Byleth still found himself treating Dimitri like a skittish animal, as though an abrupt movement would have Dimitri dashing back to the cathedral, huddled again in his rank-smelling cloak, silent or, worse, cruel to those who tried to speak with him. So despite his worry about Dimitri’s abused muscles Byleth went alone to the sauna: perhaps if Dimitri went to the dining hall he would encounter Dedue, who would force him to eat something of substance. That would have to be good enough for Byleth. 

It was dinnertime so the sauna was blessedly empty; Byleth was a little afraid he would fall asleep if he laid down on one of the smooth wooden benches but he allowed himself to slouch horrendously against one wall as the hot, humid air relaxed his sore muscles. After a moment, as he was alone, he stripped his shirt and let the clean sweat of the sauna bead upon and then trickle down his chest, ticklish little trails that traced the flat line of his sternum and the lengths of his sides from his underarms to his waist. The little room was quiet except for the hiss and sizzle of the hot rocks, still except for the slow swirl of steam.

When the door to the sauna opened Byleth slit one eye open, then opened both in surprise when he saw Dimitri, still in his long-sleeved shirt and loose trousers, attempting to quietly close the door behind him. 

“You decided to come after all,” Byleth said. 

“Yes. I was—” Dimitri began, then caught himself and, with a little smile, said, “Well, I am glad it is only you here, Professor.” 

Byleth watched Dimitri settle on the bench, a little space between them. “They won’t believe you less kingly if they see you bleed,” Byleth said softly. 

Dimitri shook his head, his hair obscuring his face from Byleth’s view. “It is not that. The goddess knows I have shed enough blood on the battlefield.” 

Byleth suddenly saw Dimitri as that skittish animal again, as though if Byleth misstepped during this conversation Dimitri would shutter himself once more. He stayed silent. 

“I have… scars,” Dimitri finally said. 

Byleth nearly laughed. Did they not all have scars? Even Linhardt, battle-averse as he was, even Dorothea, with her flawless actress’s face and her creamy pale chest and shoulders—even they had been wounded badly enough in battle for slim shining scars to stand out on their skin if one knew where to look.

“Dimitri,” Byleth said, very carefully. 

“During that time—those years. Here, and elsewhere.” Dimitri made an abortive little gesture with his hand, as though to encompass miles traversed, atrocities committed, years lost to loneliness and guilt and misery. “I did not have… you know I never had any skill at healing. Nor did I care to,” he continued, hesitantly, “heal myself.” 

“Ah,” Byleth said. 

“That’s how I lost the eye.” Dimitri’s broad shoulders hunched, his damp shirt stretching across the tense muscles. He was gripping the wood of the bench hard enough for the pulled-taut skin to go white over his scarred, misshapen knuckles. “I… it might have been saved. If I’d gone to a healer.” The unspoken narrative: not just the injury but the infection, the slow decay, the belated excision. 

“Right,” Byleth said. 

“And the rest of my body, too.” Dimitri gestured vaguely with his hand again.

Byleth waited. The rocks sizzled quietly; without the addition of more water the steam in the sauna was dissipating. Byleth was afraid any movement would break the spell that seemed to have come over Dimitri. Dimitri’s hair still hung limply between them, obscuring his eye. 

“I was born dead,” Byleth finally said. 

Dimitri startled slightly.

“I had… a procedure was done. Here,” Byleth said, bringing a hand delicately to his bare chest. He knew where the scar was without looking. 

At this Dimitri turned to look at Byleth. His eye tracked over Byleth’s whole body, not just the thin and strangely warped old scar that ran from his underarm to the flat of his sternum but his flushed face and damp hair, his bare shoulders and chest, his splayed knees and his pink, overwarm feet. The gaze was piercing, not just a glance to see which spot Byleth was indicating but a calculating survey that reminded Byleth that Dimitri’s unhinged, bloodthirsty days were not so distant as they all liked to believe. 

“Magical?” Dimitri asked eventually. 

Byleth nodded. “Still doesn’t beat,” he said, splaying his fingers over his silent heart. 

Dimitri shifted suddenly, unclenching one hand from around the edge of the bench, his fingers fluttering in the air for a moment as though he had to stop himself reaching for something. 

“I have a pulse,” Byleth continued, looking at Dimitri’s hand. “I think they’re supposed to change. The rhythm. I wouldn’t know. Mine is always the same.” 

Dimitri turned his hand palm-up between them. His fingers, mottled and uneven with calluses and scar tissue, curled gently in toward his palm. The flesh of his palm was also worn into strange unnatural peaks and valleys with calluses, the hard skin forming a curved divot where the hilt of Areadbhar would fit comfortably. His sleeve pulled back from his wrist slightly so that Byleth could see where the broad expanse of his palm narrowed to vulnerable throat of his wrist, the skin there thin and pale in comparison with the thick calluses that marred his palm. Long slim tendons and the little dendritic tracks of veins were visible underneath the skin. “Would you like to feel?” Dimitri asked. 

Byleth reached toward him. He clasped Dimitri’s wrist lightly in his hand, feeling his smallest fingers slide underneath the hem of Dimitri’s sleeve. It felt very intimate to be touching him like this; Dimitri’s skin was warm from the sauna and the shirt he still stubbornly wore and Byleth could feel goosebumps break out across Dimitri’s skin as well as the little shudder that coursed through Dimitri’s whole body at the touch. Byleth slotted his first two fingers into the hollow beside the thick tendon that extended from the base of Dimitri’s palm to the secret inside of his arm hidden beneath his shirtsleeve. 

When he first felt the flutter of Dimitri’s pulse Byleth nearly pulled his hand back reflexively, startled by the abrupt realization of the aliveness of Dimitri’s body: the insistent beating of his heart, quicker than Byleth’s own pulse had ever been; the strange involuntary movement of blood under his skin. Byleth thought of all the other innate reflexive flutterings within the animal of Dimitri’s body, the expansion of his broad chest with each breath, the movement of his eyelid as he blinked, the soft wet contractions of the pink muscles within his throat when he swallowed, swallowed again. Dimitri’s pulse was fast, growing faster, the little vein beneath Byleth’s gentle touch throbbing wildly. 

“Oh,” Byleth said, belatedly, staring at his own hand on Dimitri’s wrist. The pearly lines of a few thin scars were visible on Dimitri’s wrist, wrapping around the curve of his arm or disappearing under his sleeve. By the time Byleth realized that Dimitri’s arm was trembling in Byleth’s hold, a little involuntary movement entirely separate from the quick thud of his pulse, Dimitri was already pulling away, gently disengaging Byleth’s grip.

“Apologies,” Dimitri said, holding his arm close to his body as though Byleth had wounded it somehow, although it had been Dimitri who first offered his wrist. Byleth wondered whether he should be insulted. “I am not… accustomed to the touch of others.” 

Byleth sat with this for a moment. He knew that his own indifference to human touch was yet another aberration of his. The majority of the people he knew required it; even Felix, notoriously catlike, had been known on a few occasions to huddle close to Sylvain in the exhausted aftermath of particularly difficult battles, his arms disappearing beneath Sylvain’s cloak, standoffish expression daring anyone to say anything. (They all, of course, knew that Felix had been in love with Sylvain since even before their academy days, and that Sylvain reciprocated for reasons unknowable. The tension between the two of them seemed to have resolved during the five years of Byleth’s absence, for which Byleth was glad, both for Felix’s and Sylvain’s sakes and for everyone else’s.) 

“I hear it can be beneficial,” Byleth said diplomatically. 

Dimitri scoffed gently, shaking his head so that his hair fell across his face once again. “I am no longer a child. I cannot ask for such things.” 

The air in the sauna was so still and so close; was that why it seemed so difficult, suddenly, for Byleth to breathe? “You could ask me.” 

“Professor.” Dimitri’s quiet voice sounded desperate. “You do not know what you invite.” 

“Then show me.”

“Professor,” Dimitri said again, now sounding pained. 

Byleth stood. It was the warmth of the sauna, certainly, which caused the strange lightheadedness that seemed to separate his conscious mind from the movements of his body, the step and pivot that placed him nearly between Dimitri’s splayed knees. Dimitri looked up at him through the jagged curtain of his damp hair. His cheeks and nose and the hollow of his throat where it was visible above the collar of his shirt were flushed bright red; his forehead and the skin of his neck glistened with sweat. His hands were still tucked up against his body as though they could not be trusted. His eye was fixed upon Byleth.

It was almost too hot to touch another body in the sauna. When he reached toward Dimitri Byleth did so slowly, telegraphing his movements as he had when Dimitri had been crazed and near-feral, crouching in the shadows untouched by the sunlight that poured into the cathedral through the caved-in ceiling. He brushed Dimitri’s hair away from his good eye, smoothing the sweat-damp strands, tucking them behind his ear. Dimitri was uncannily still. Byleth touched his jaw lightly, the whorls at the pads of his fingers dragging with a quiet prickly sound over Dimitri’s stubble. Dimitri’s eyelid fluttered. His eye looked very dark. With his other hand Byleth smoothed Dimitri’s hair back from the right side of his face, fingertips skating over the soft leather of his eyepatch. Dimitri seemed very small with his head cradled in Byleth’s gentle hands like this. Byleth was still very aware of the involuntary animal processes that thrummed beneath Dimitri’s skin, blood and breath, the little tremblings of his tense muscles. Dimitri was so fragile. So mortal. 

“You can touch me, too,” Byleth said. 

“Not here,” Dimitri responded. His voice was still strained and quiet. 

“Would you like to come to my room?” Byleth asked.

Dimitri nodded, dipping his chin against the gentle splay of Byleth’s fingers and then up again so that Byleth’s fingers ghosted over his jaw, prickly stubble, warm sweat. “Please,” Dimitri whispered. 

In the bath house beside the sauna they went into adjacent stalls but Byleth could hear the slosh of water in Dimitri’s as Dimitri surely could in Byleth’s. He thought about Dimitri’s bare skin; imagined that the soft wet sounds that echoed through the bathhouse were Dimitri’s hands on his damp body. He imagined Dimitri’s hands on his own body. They emerged at about the same time, Dimitri’s clean wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of his dressing gown, the thick wide collar dense with intricate embroidery, lions and birds caught up in the slim reaching tendrils of vines. In comparison, Byleth’s own dressing gown was plain, but it was softer and warmer than perhaps any article of clothing he had ever owned before coming to the monastery and he liked the feeling of it against the bare skin that was not covered by his loose nightclothes. Wrapped in his plush dressing gown Dimitri looked soft and clean and touchable, his cheeks still faintly flushed from the warmth of the sauna, his slim bony ankles visible, sweetly vulnerable. 

They encountered no one in the plaza between the bath house and the training grounds. Byleth was glad that his room was not farther from the bath house, as Dimitri would have little time to reconsider Byleth’s offer and flee. He found himself becoming more excited about the prospect of touching Dimitri than his innocent offer had betrayed: it was not the altruistic thought of assuaging Dimitri’s obvious psychological distress that buoyed Byleth but instead a selfish hunger for the feeling of Dimitri’s skin beneath his hands and a ravenous curiosity about the scars that marred that skin. Byleth wanted to soothe them, but he also wanted simply to know them—to be the only person to know them, besides Dedue, but perhaps not even him—to have this secret knowledge of the hidden intimate spaces of Dimitri’s body.

The sun, not yet set, painted the worn stones of the monastery with rich golden light where it reached and created deep shadows where it did not. The wall of the Officer’s Academy behind which the sun had already retreated cast the corridor of the dormitory into a purplish dusk. A few fireflies had already emerged, drifting lazily among the trees that dotted the plaza. Byleth’s room was pleasantly cool in contrast to the summer evening’s warmth and the thick humidity of the sauna. 

Perhaps it was forward to lock the door, assuming too much, but Byleth’s students had a habit of knocking perfunctorily before simply opening his door and it was best to err on the side of caution. Dimitri stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, watching Byleth strike a match and then walk the circuit of the room, methodically touching it to each of the candles before the match burned too close to his fingertips. When he shook the match out and disposed of it he looked back at Dimitri, who had not moved and was in fact looking like he had had ample time to reconsider Byleth’s offer and was on the verge of fleeing. 

“Sit,” Byleth said, gesturing toward the bed; Dimitri did. It would perhaps have been humorous, under different circumstances, to see a man as large and powerful as Dimitri so deliberately attempting to make himself smaller, as though it would be an imposition to take up as much space in Byleth’s personal quarters as he naturally did. 

Byleth approached Dimitri as he had in the sauna, standing before him, slowly lifting his hands toward Dimitri’s face to cradle it in his palms. Dimitri held very still. Byleth brushed the pad of one thumb over Dimitri’s cheek affectionately, feeling his prickly stubble and the warmth of his skin, and Dimitri visibly tensed against a shudder. 

“It’s fine,” Byleth said into the quiet, tense space between them. “Whatever you feel is fine.” 

Dimitri shook his head in an abrupt manner, jerking his chin out of Byleth’s hands. His damp hair fluttered over his eyepatch and half-obscured his good eye. Byleth patiently pushed it back, smoothing the soft wet locks away from his face, and he tried to card his fingers through the hair at the side of Dimitri’s head but his fingers tangled in the strap of the eyepatch and the damp hair snarled. Carefully, Byleth reached around to the back of Dimitri’s head and untied the eyepatch. 

“Don’t,” Dimitri said, but he did not stop Byleth from sliding the straps gently out of the tangle of his hair and lifting it away from his face. 

A thick line of mottled red-pink scar tissue bisected the sunken hollow where Dimitri’s eye had been. The closed lid drooped unevenly where the scar made it stiff, sagging lopsidedly over the empty socket. The skin covered by the eyepatch was protected from the sun so there was a line delineating pale from sun-pinked skin that stretched from below his ear across the middle of his forehead. Byleth dropped the eyepatch onto the bed. Dimitri flinched. 

Byleth ran his fingertips over the arch of Dimitri’s eyebrow, ignoring the slick scar that interrupted the golden hair there, then traced the curve of Dimitri’s eye socket. The skin was smooth and warm. Dimitri grimaced, his eyebrows drawing together, but Byleth just followed the curve of the bone until his fingers rested at the top of Dimitri’s cheek. He slid them over Dimitri’s high cheekbone and then to the hollow of his cheek, his jaw, the soft lobe of his ear. 

Gently nudging Dimitri’s knees apart Byleth stepped between them, close enough to feel the warmth that radiated from Dimitri’s body. He slid his hands around the sides of Dimitri’s neck, pushing his thumbs into the warm damp hair at the back of Dimitri’s head, and then eased Dimitri’s head forward so that his forehead rested against Byleth’s stomach. 

Dimitri let out a sigh and then collapsed against Byleth. Byleth leaned into him, bracing himself agains the weight of Dimitri’s body so that they supported one another. He twined his arms around Dimitri’s head, holding it close to himself. Dimitri’s arms came up around Byleth’s thighs. Perhaps this would be the furthest they would go: clothed, embracing chastely, the side of Dimitri’s face tucked comfortably into the little concave curve of Byleth’s belly. Byleth found that he did not mind the thought. 

Byleth petted the hair at the back of Dimitri’s head. It was still damp, so warm little rivulets of water coursed over Byleth’s fingers and slipped down Dimitri’s neck, soaking the collar of his dressing gown and the neck of the shirt he wore beneath it. Byleth followed their progress, easing his fingertips below Dimitri’s clothes to feel the warmth of his body that was trapped there. Dimitri shivered. Byleth held him through it, then asked: “Do you want more?” 

Dimitri nodded. 

The place between Dimitri’s dressing gown and the soft shirt he wore was warm when Byleth slid his hands under the collar of the dressing gown to splay his fingers across Dimitri’s broad shoulders, tracing the shapes of his muscles and the protrusions of his scapulae beneath the skin. Despite the time in the sauna Dimitri’s muscles still felt painfully tense and Byleth eased the heels of his hands over the taut line of Dimitri’s left trapezius and the curve of his right deltoid. Dimitri let out a shaky breath. Byleth grew bolder, pushing the collar of Dimitri’s dressing gown away to touch his neck and shoulders and back. Dimitri’s muscles were so tense and his body was so warm. 

“Can I take this off?” Byleth asked, plucking gently at Dimitri’s shirt. 

Dimitri was silent. Then, hesitantly, he nodded once more.

The skin of Dimitri’s torso and arms was not the soft gradient of peony-pink and hidden, translucent eggshell white that Byleth may have expected from the coloration of what was visible, his face and the pale backs of his hands. Rather, the skin revealed when he removed his shirt was a ragged patchwork of pearly whites and angry reds, splotchy and uneven in some places where new scars had piled on top of old to create thick, painful-looking lumps. There were not only the gashes left by swords and axes and the distinct little starbursts of arrowheads, but also the wide mottled swaths of shiny pink tissue left after a burn has healed, as well as the branching Lichtenberg figures that were the aftermath of dark magic. The scars that covered Dimitri’s back were noticeably older than the rest—burns, mostly, but pale and mostly smooth rather than dark and jagged. Byleth could guess the provenance of those. The rest of the scars were difficult to place, the remnants of hundreds of anonymous, interchangeable battles, foes who got lucky with quick strikes or powerful swings of their weapons or who overwhelmed Dimitri with sheer numbers when he was alone in the back country of what was now the Faerghus Dukedom, the territories of cowardly viscounts and unfaithful lords. Among these, across his ribs and flanks and upper arms, along the line on his forearm where the bone was closest to the surface, new bruises blossomed from today’s brutal session in the training grounds: broken vessels bleeding under the skin in shades of red and purple, soon to bloom to blue and near-black and then fade to sickly green and orange. Some of the bruises were interrupted by the fat glossy lines of scars, the bruise touching the scar only with little intermittent spots of red and purple.

When Dimitri moved the scars pulled this way and that, some warping over the curves of his muscles and bones, some tugging against one another so that the shiny scar tissue wrinkled into strange parallel lines. Byleth reached out to ghost his hands over the worst of them, a huge red-pink line with angry mottled edges that spoke of barely cured infection which carved through one pectoral, a glossy and raised near-purple burn scar that seemed rather stuck to Dimitri’s arm than like part of him, as though Byleth could pluck at the edges with careful fingertips and peel the whole thing away to reveal smooth unblemished skin underneath. 

“I understand if you—” Dimitri began, voice rough. 

“Lie back,” Byleth interrupted. 

“What?” Dimitri looked up at Byleth. His hair, nearly dry now, was fluffy and soft-looking where it fell across his forehead. His eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. 

“You’ll be more comfortable if you lie down,” Byleth said. 

“Oh.” 

Dimitri did lie back on the bed at Byleth’s direction, gingerly resting his head on Byleth’s pillow. Before he could think too hard about it Byleth straddled him, the hem of his half-undone dressing gown draping over the bedclothes, one of Dimitri’s legs, and one of Byleth’s, where the inside of his thigh was pressed to the outside of Dimitri’s hip. They both wore soft, thin sleep pants that did nothing to hide their bodies’ warmth from one another. Dimitri’s hands fluttered indecisively at his sides. 

“Touch me,” Byleth said, and Dimitri did: he fitted his broad callused palms to Byleth’s thighs, tentatively exploring the crease where they met his slim hips, then touching the peaks of Byleth’s hipbones where they were visible through the material of his pants. His hands were gentle at first but he seemed to realize Byleth would not break so easily so he held him with greater force, his fingertips pressing little dimples into the muscles of Byleth’s thighs. 

Byleth touched Dimitri, too, running his hands from Dimitri’s slim waist to his broad shoulders, learning the strange topography of his body, slick soft scars and the sparse, oft interrupted down of golden chest hair, the ridges of his too-tense muscles and the spokes of his ribs, the tender dip of his waist. Dimitri gripped Byleth’s thighs so tightly. 

“No one has ever touched you like this.” Byleth meant to phrase it as a question but it ended up a statement. 

“Never,” Dimitri said, voice strained. 

Bracing one hand beside the soft halo of Dimitri’s clean hair where it splayed over the pillow Byleth leaned over him, and as he shifted his weight his thighs spread wider over Dimitri’s hips. Touching one another like this was a clear simulacrum of sex but despite Byleth’s moderate arousal it felt more intimate than obscene. Dimitri slid his hands up to Byleth’s torso, pushing inside his untied dressing gown and under the loose material of his shirt so that his hands were caught beside Byleth’s skin. His hands felt rough and very large splayed over the narrow span of Byleth’s waist. 

Byleth was so aware of the fragile mortality of Dimitri’s body, the thin skin and brittle bone that were the only shield between Dimitri’s presence here, beneath Byleth, trembling despite the warmth trapped between their bodies, and Dimitri’s abrupt and irreversible departure from this plane of existence: the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times Dimitri had so narrowly avoided death, perhaps forgettable to Dimitri but each moment mapped in scar tissue here for Byleth to explore with wonder. Byleth recognized the blessing of each of these scars, the boon each of them granted to Byleth: Dimitri, Dimitri, Dimitri. He kissed the closest one, the thick pinkish-red line that split Dimitri’s pectoral from shoulder to sternum, scar tissue glossy and strangely striated: it was smooth to Byleth’s lips, plump, as though the involuntary processes within Dimitri had seen the injury and burst through his skin to protect him, like the animal of his body was as invested in his survival as Byleth was, despite the rage and grief and self-hatred that Dimitri had drawn around himself like a shroud all those years. Byleth parted his lips against the scar and Dimitri stifled a moan beneath him; Byleth could feel it reverberate through his chest where Byleth touched him, open mouth, splayed hand. Byleth kissed the scar and the skin beside it and the flat of Dimitri’s sternum, the swell of one pectoral and the crooked line of his collarbone: broken and healed wrong, likely still painful, the place where the bone had imperfectly knit back together a little lump under the skin. 

Dimitri’s breath came quick and shallow, his lower lip caught between his teeth, his cheeks and neck flushed a sweet petal pink. The color became mottled and uneven further down Dimitri’s chest, skirting carefully around the edges of the scars, bringing a warmth to Dimitri’s skin that Byleth could feel with his open mouth. He chased the warmth up Dimitri’s throat to the soft underside of his jaw, skin prickly with stubble, esoteric muscles convulsing underneath. Byleth kissed the line of his jaw and the corner of his mouth and, when Dimitri released it from between his teeth, his swollen lower lip, plump and pink, wet with saliva. 

The kiss was gentle but sure. They found ways for their mouths to fit together, parting their lips slowly, breathing shallow little breaths that fanned out hotly against one another’s sensitive skin, the tender curves of lips and cheeks, the fluttering splay of eyelashes. The bitten-pink softness of Dimitri’s lower lip hinted at the tenderness and warmth of the inside of his mouth, slick cheeks, mobile tongue, but Byleth did not explore these secret places, not yet. Even just to press his lips chastely to Dimitri’s like this caused something profound to open within him: as though his skin, too, had been abruptly cut to reveal the bare white chasm of a fresh wound, the parted virgin lips of it dotted with capillaries, slit veins pearling perfect little orbs of blood.

Dimitri held him so tightly, in sweet contrast to the delicacy of the kiss. Byleth knew Dimitri was forgetting his own strength and he was glad of it, glad that the ardor with which Dimitri wanted Byleth eclipsed, if just for a moment, Dimitri’s perpetual self-consciousness. Byleth would give him that; Byleth would give him anything. In the moments between the soft warm touches of their mouths Byleth breathed against Dimitri, eyes unfocused and half-lidded, seeing hazily the pink flush of Dimitri’s cheeks and the dark slash of the scar over his right eyelid, the flutter of his thick golden eyelashes and the jewel-bright blue of his left eye. 

Seeming to recognize his own strength Dimitri loosened his grip, but he still moved his hands across the smooth skin of Byleth’s back, splayed fingers spanning from the little dip at the small of his back to the peaks of his scapulae, sliding over the curves of his ribs and the divot above his spine, bringing Byleth closer to him. As Byleth leaned down the loose expanse of his unfastened dressing gown fell around them, creating a warm enclosed space where they could share the heat of one another’s bodies, and when the material of Byleth’s shirt brushed the bare skin of Dimitri’s chest it made him shiver. They kissed, kissed again, more fervent now, breathing more heavily against each other’s mouths, and when Byleth darted his tongue between Dimitri’s lips Dimitri gasped a sweet little choked-off moan against his mouth. 

Byleth chased the startled sweetness of Dimitri’s moan, delving his tongue again into the hot slick interior of Dimitri’s mouth, drawing from him another desperate noise that Byleth could feel reverberate within his chest. If Dimitri were a Hero’s Relic then Byleth’s blood hummed with the Crest that would bring him to life: the places where Byleth touched Dimitri seemed to light them both up, power surging through them in the places where they connected and the places where they didn’t. They were aglow with it. 

Byleth’s thighs spread wide over Dimitri’s hips, his knees to either side of Dimitri’s slim waist, his calves tucked warmly against the sides of Dimitri’s body. The line of Dimitri’s cock beneath the thin material of his sleep pants was visibly hard; Byleth’s was, too, aroused from the nearness of Dimitri and the hot kisses they shared, the sweet tremor and writhe of Dimitri’s body beneath his own, Dimitri’s breathy little moans and gasps. Yet arousal seemed secondary to Byleth’s purpose here; if he was interested in bringing either of them to completion it was Dimitri, and more for his own sake than for Byleth’s. 

“Do you want me to touch you here?” Byleth murmured between kisses, tracing the uneven topography of Dimitri’s torso until his fingers curled at the waistband of Dimitri’s pants low on his hips: suggestive, but ready to draw back if necessary. 

“I—yes,” Dimitri said, chest heaving. He rolled his head to the side on the pillow as though he couldn’t look at Byleth while he said it. “Please.” 

Byleth kissed the line of his jaw. “You need only to tell me to stop.” 

Dimitri choked out a little laugh. “I do not think I will do that.” 

_Oh_ , Byleth thought, so tenderly, and he chased the shy tilt of Dimitri’s head so that he could kiss his mouth again. 

He began slowly, touching Dimitri through his clothing: cupping his palm over the curving line of Dimitri’s arousal, dragging his hand from the base to the head, mapping its rigidity and its warmth. When Dimitri’s cock was twitching and he was biting back desperate little pleas Byleth leaned back to unfasten his pants, tugging the soft loose material away from the hard lines of his hips to reveal the wiry down of golden pubic hair that trailed from his navel to the base of his cock, then the thick length of it, the same slick and straining tenderly flushed pink as his kiss-plumped lips and the widest of his scars. Little glittering drops of precome pearled at the slit and smeared across Dimitri’s skin.

Byleth moved down Dimitri’s body, feeling the strain in his hips and thighs from having been braced over Dimitri’s waist for so long, touching his slim hips and thick thighs, the skin there also mottled and strangely uneven with the aftermath of years of badly healed wounds. Dimitri’s hands never left Byleth’s body, rucking Byleth’s shirt around his shoulders until Byleth shed the dressing gown and the shirt, mussed hair covering his eyes until Dimitri delved his hands into the soft clean fall of it and pushed it affectionately away from Byleth’s forehead, tracing his thumb so gently over the arch of one eyebrow. 

There was more skin to touch, now, not just Byleth’s hands on Dimitri’s naked torso but Dimitri’s on Byleth’s, his callused palms rough against the sensitive skin at the insides of Byleth’s arms and the nape of his neck, the flat expanse of his chest, throat and collarbones, the protruding cartilage curve of each ear. When Byleth leaned down to mouth at the hot slick head of Dimitri’s cock Dimitri jolted underneath him, hands tightening in his hair in a way that was not unpleasant. 

“Oh,” Dimitri said, immediately letting go, but Byleth caught one retreating hand and replaced it in his hair. He glanced up Dimitri’s body, the scar-warped skin that stretched strangely taut over the hard topography of muscle and bone, and held Dimitri’s hand against his head as he sunk the head of his cock between his wet lips. 

“Fuck,” Dimitri breathed. 

Byleth did not tease. He took Dimitri’s cock deep into his saliva-slick mouth, pressing his tongue tight and hollowing his cheeks, working his hand around what his lips could not reach. The precome that seeped from the head of Dimitri’s cock washed bitterly over Byleth’s tongue. The length of it was huge, smooth as scar tissue and hot as blood, and when the fat slick head touched the ridges of the roof of Byleth’s mouth it spilled more precome, filling Byleth’s mouth entirely so that he swallowed and swallowed.

How responsive Dimitri was to every movement, the tightening of Byleth’s hand around the base of his cock and each flutter of Byleth’s mouth. With the hand that was not buried in Byleth’s hair Dimitri clawed at the bedsheets, sending great furrows through the fabric. His chest heaved and trembled with each breath and his hips stuttered up and up against Byleth’s mouth until Byleth splayed a firm hand over the tender skin and hard bone at the joint of his thigh, holding him down. Like that Dimitri came: tugging at Byleth’s hair, fucking up into his mouth, clutching the sheets hard enough to tear. 

Byleth swallowed the hot mouthful of Dimitri’s come but the bitter, salt-rich taste lingered in his mouth, lingered, still, when Dimitri weakly tugged Byleth up his body to kiss his lips again. Uncaring, Dimitri delved his tongue into Byleth’s mouth as though chasing the taste, chasing the knowledge that Byleth had taken that tender and intimate part of Dimitri into himself, had lavished care upon Dimitri’s body in a way no one had ever done. Byleth held him close, wrapping his arms around Dimitri’s neck, hitching one thigh over Dimitri’s hip to settle their bodies together. Dimitri’s thick arm wound about Byleth’s waist. Byleth was still hard, the length of his cock jutting into the hot space between their bodies, Dimitri’s belly and Byleth’s hip, but his own arousal was easy to ignore when he held Dimitri like this. 

Dimitri still seemed so fragile and so mortal, perhaps even more so now that Byleth knew the delicate tremors that could wrack his muscular, scar-spliced body and the sweet breathy little noises he made at the height of pleasure, and Byleth held him tightly as though to impart his own steadfastness to Dimitri, as though to imbue him with the world-rending power of Sothis that inhabited Byleth’s own body, as though to tell him with his actions what he could not seem to with his words: that he was not alone and that he never would be again.


End file.
